We appreciate Michael Fradley and Nichole Sheldrick's response to our 2016 Antiquity paper. They claim that our results are “potentially misleading”, that there is an incorrect “emphasis on looting as the most significant problem facing Egypt's heritage” and that our prediction model is flawed. Our paper, however, clearly focuses on the major population centre of Egypt—the Nile Valley and Delta regions—where the bulk of the archaeological sites are located. This is a basic Egyptological fact.
They also state that we do not clarify time periods and did not look beyond the Roman period. Our date discussion formed one small paragraph in the original article, and will be expanded upon in the future. Our database of looted sites does, in fact, have an Islamic-period site category. We did not have the space to discuss the time periods in detail.
They further critique our interpolation map, stating that it incorrectly expands into the deserts. That is, however, how interpolation maps work. We never claimed that results from the deserts vs the Nile Valley would be comparable; such an analysis of site damage would require a vastly different study.
The EAMENA team studied 50000km2 of Egypt's Eastern Desert. They are correct to state that encroachment is not an issue there, but they ignore major ongoing looting/damage to dozens of inscription sites, which are unobservable through satellite imagery. The Eastern Desert, despite the presence of quarrying sites, forts, roads and smaller settlements, is the most site-poor region of Egypt (compared to the Western Desert and the Nile Valley/Delta).
The EAMENA team claims to have discovered 9800 potential sites, “the vast majority of which probably relate to ancient mining and quarrying industries”, yet the methods they used to identify ‘new’ sites are unclear, and they apparently have not ground-truthed a single ‘new’ site. Any claims of new sites are, therefore, completely moot until such time as proof is provided.
A single ‘sitescape’, such as Luxor, can have thousands of ancient sites. We never stated that only 1100 sites exist in Egypt. Using sitescapes was the easiest method to collate our data, with many Egyptologists in agreement of our choice for this investigation. Thus, the question remains: how many ancient sites are there in the Nile Valley and Delta? They probably number in the many tens of thousands. But how to verify that number is debatable. Does, for example, a single tomb constitute a site?
The basic argument of this response to our paper seems to be that the EAMENA team found more sites than we did, so mining is a bigger problem than looting and encroachment. There are countless issues inherent in that claim, a few of which have been addressed above.
The EAMENA team also appears to have no contact with Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities (MoA), which has extensive site databases and local knowledge. We recognise that ancient sites such as Sukari (along with others in the Western Desert) are threatened, but a) that was not the focus of our paper; and b) hundreds of Egyptological projects work in the Nile Valley and Delta, compared with only a few in the Eastern Desert. That disparity should demonstrate where most archaeological sites in Egypt exist and are threatened.
Overall, the authors seem to have misread our paper, perhaps misinterpreting it through the lens of their own work in the Eastern Desert. We make it clear that both looting and encroachment are threatening Egypt's archaeological sites. Site encroachment causes sites to disappear, while looting results in large numbers of artefacts appearing illegally on the market. Looting is of greater concern to Egypt's MoA and law-enforcement officials, hence our emphasis. One main point of our paper was to determine when “looting actually become a problem in Egypt”, which is ignored in the response by Fradley and Sheldrick. While 2011 has been suggested as the initial date for looting, we have shown that it was already occurring in the aftermath of the 2008 economic recession. This represents a major discovery.
Additionally, the authors claim that we do not discuss regional scale and the variability of encroachment, and that ours was simply an overview paper. They then review our prediction model, which was negatively affected by the lack of satellite data. We stated that if nothing were to be done and the looting continued at the present rate, this would be the projected outcome. Climate change scientists, whose models involve far more complex data than ours, present multiple scenarios for tipping points, depending on input factors. Ours was a simple test, and one that we will refine in the future. We also never claimed that there would be 100 per cent damage to sites, but rather that 100 per cent of sites would be affected.
Are legal and illegal modern mining threats to Egyptian sites? We note that Fradley and Sheldrick do not distinguish between legal and illegal mining sites (which would be impossible to discern in the satellite data), both of which exist in the Eastern Desert (Al-Masry Al-Youm 2017). They are a threat, and one not to be ignored. Mining does not, however, carry the same threat commensurate with encroachment and looting. This is an unquestionable fact, supported by over 150 years of Egyptological observation.
Illegal quarrying (for building materials rather than gold) represents a far greater and as yet unaddressed threat to sites, which the government is now attempting to stop. This has become an issue in Dashur and Lisht (el-Aref Reference El-Aref2017), which we discovered in our 2016 field season. Using Google Earth satellite imagery from 2004–2016, we assessed two areas in Dashur and Lisht. For Dashur, illegal quarrying began in 2004 as a 500 × 500m area. By autumn 2016, it covered 2.3 × 1.5km—an increase of 1380 per cent. For Lisht, in the 2004 imagery, illegal quarrying began as an 80 × 80m area. By autumn 2016, the area measured 550 × 520m—an increase of 29700 per cent. Illegal quarrying in these areas has destroyed multiple tombs, and will threaten the stability of several pyramids if not stopped.
Fradley and Sheldrick's response also completely ignores the work of the MoA Recovery and Repatriation team. Mining does not create a huge market for antiquities. There has been an obvious increase in the recovery of such stolen antiquities since 2011.
Finally, the authors ignore the fundamental issue of site looting in Egypt: that it destroys the context of artefacts and features. Looting has affected nearly 300 sitescapes (and many thousands of individual sites and features), and is something that all Egyptologists are dedicated to stopping.
There are no rewards for teams that map the most evidence for looting and site damage in Egypt. Progress can be made with local training initiatives and community engagement, in close partnership with the MoA. One example is the training programme ‘Memphis: Egypt's Ancient Capital’, part of the long-term AERA training programme (www.aeraweb.org n.d.), headed by Mark Lehner; another is the Fayoum Field School, headed by Willeke Wendrich. Although this work is difficult, it is very rewarding in that it represents a long-term method of stopping the local looting of sites.
At Lisht, where we have a Joint Mission with the MoA, we have installed a lighting system, built a guard house, installed multiple doors on tombs, paid for year-round guards and currently employ over 70 locals. As a result of this engagement, we have been informed that major looting at Lisht stopped in 2015. We also have a local field school. This is, however, but one site, and Egypt is a large country. The Egyptians that we train will take what they learn back to their regional offices and sites. These Egyptian inspectors have given us optimism about the future of Egypt's archaeology. Empowering them with new digital technology alongside community engagement will be a long road, but one worth travelling.
In short, we thank the authors for their response, but do not believe that their issues with our work and publication are as dramatic as they imply. We look forward to collaborating in the future, should such a proposal be of interest, and sharing data that will hopefully lead to advances in site preservation and protection across Egypt, be it in the Eastern Desert, the Nile Valley/Delta or the Western Desert.
